2010

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

[Meh]
Extremely Trashy

Sequel to 2001 set, obviously, nine years after that movie. About a group of Russian astronauts who decide to go out to Jupiter or wherever and investigate the monolith as well as the abandoned space ship from the first film. They bring along a few Americans (Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Bob Balaban and maybe one other guy, I forget) so that they can decipher the information on the computer.

The first hour is about them trying to get to Jupiter. I sort of tuned out during this part so I'm not sure exactly what the problem was. There was some bureaucratic bullshit and then some aliens attacked them or something. And then the second hour is them trying to get away from Jupiter. They didn't really do a whole lot while they were there.

Okay, okay, the woke up HAL (turns out he's not such a bad guy), got some painfully cryptic messages from Keir Dullea (turns out he's still out there. Sort of?) and had some politcal problems. Apparently, down on Earth, the cold war is still going on or some damn thing and then it breaks all out and the astronauts from either nationality are forced to go onto separate spaceships. And they fuckin do it! Just because some jerk back on Earth told them to! I mean, who the fuck cares? They're orbitting fuckin Jupiter. So what if the Americans trespass on Russian property? What are the Russians going to do, arrest them? It takes them like two years to get out there. That was dumb.

Anyway, all in all the movie was pretty mediocre, not even triggering my rage reflex. It was just sort of dull and long. Although, it was probably the best parody of 2001 I think I've ever seen.

I mean, weird stuff is going on for no apparent reason!!!! Ooooooh, what could be happening? This is so deep. Who gives two fucks.

Honestly, if this movie had bothered trying to address and analyze whatever the fuck was supposed to be happening in the first one rather than just trying to be equally weird and stupid, maybe they would have gotten somewhere.

But yeah. On top of the fact that this movie is even more mystifying and full of shit than the first one, the characters and writing were also terrible. And they used the same damn music, only now, instead of actually making sure it matched the scene, they just jammed it in to say "You know this is like 2001 because we're using the same music". And it wasn't even written for that movie. Fuck. It's like how they find some way to cram 'Extreme Ways' into every Bourne movie, although at least in that case they do the decent thing and put it at the end.

The only improvement on the first movie is the addition of a female character. Unfortunately, it was Helen Mirren doing a shitty Russian accent. The whole time I was going, "but..... it's Helen fuckin Mirren.... why couldn't they cast someone who was actually Russian or who could at least do a competant accent?" Also, her character's name is Tanya Kirbuk. At least her first name wasn't 'Yelnats', coz, y'know, that would just be stupid and obvious. Fuck.

Yeah, not a very interesting or useful film.

END

Written and Directed by: Peter Hyams, based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke. Starring: Roy Schneider, John Lithgow, Hellen Mirren, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea, Douglas Rain, Dana Elcar